Coming Up For Air

5.7

"And in the end
I'd do it all again
I think you're my best friend
Don't you know that the kids aren't alright?"
-Fall Out Boy, 'The Kids Aren't Alright'

☂Ashton☂

Ashton wasn't quite sure what to do with himself, so after being home (away from Luke) for almost two weeks, he ducked into the tiny bathroom in his house and did what his mother had told him he should have done the second he landed in Australia.

"Hello?" A groggy voice said at the end of the line, and Ashton was suddenly incapable of speech. His voice was just so breathydeepthroatylyricalsofthardsexyroughsmoothinnocentprettysinful painful to hear.

"Hello?" The voice said again, giving Ashton inexplicable chills. "Oh, Christ. It's 3:39 in the morning and I have school so can you not prank call me again? Very funny. Goodb--,"

"Luke." Ashton croaked, and then cleared his throat and sewed his chest shut as best he could. "Um...hi, Luke."

Luke was silent for days on end.

"It's Ashton?" Ashton finally asked, because he wasn't quite sure himself.

"I know." Luke said, in a dead-flowers kind of way.

Ashton didn't know what to do, so he just breathed in and out and tried to find a part of himself that wasn't terrified to shatter the plastic connection he'd managed to establish.

"Hi." Ashton said again.

"You already said that." Luke told him gently.

"I don't know what else to say." Ashton admitted.

"You could tell me why you called." Luke suggested, and Ashton could hear him shifting around and he wished he was beside him so they could trace each other's edges, and make sweet conversation in the morning, and drink orange juice from the same glass, and oh, Christ,--

"I miss you." Ashton said, and he felt his heart beat right of of his chest because Luke just ripped right through him.

"I miss you too, Ash." Luke whispered. "All the time."

"God--" Suddenly, Ashton was quelling sobs and choking on everything he hated about miles. "Luke, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have--I shouldn't--,"

"Stop." Luke said firmly. "Don't apologize. Don't you dare feel like you have to apologize."

"But I--but, in the airport--,"

"Ashton," Luke said, cutting him off. "Ash, I've realized some things since you left."

Ashton was silent for a second. "Okay."

"I've realized..." Luke trailed off. "God, I'm no good at this. You were always so good at talking. How do you make it all sound so right?"

Ashton laughed softly. "As I'm sure you've realized, I'm rather destructively unafraid to bare my soul."

Luke's breathing filled the universe for a second.

"Okay. Soul-baring. Okay. So. So when you left, at first everybody hated me because...well, Calum was angry about my mum and Michael was angry because he loves you and I hurt you, and I just felt like an explosion. Everything sucked, just in general." Luke began, and Ashton was already drowning because he never knew he could be so cataclysmic.

"Michael made Calum walk like 5 miles in the almost-snow on the way home from the airport because he was screaming at me. Then Michael told me some stuff and I went home and proceeded not to sleep for about three days. It was all very terrible." Luke said, sounding oddly frank about it.